Pauline doesn’t eat what her family eats. She doesn’t eat the Wheatabix her mother slams into the table, rattling milk from her glass. She doesn’t eat at dinner time, won’t touch their greasy cutlets and their boiled red potatoes. She watches the way they chew, their faces twisting through each bite, and that’s enough. She knows they’re sick with hunger; so is she, but not the kind that sates itself with slimy starch and bland stewed meats.
Pauline eats alone in her room when her mother brings a tray.
“You’ve got to eat, Love,” Mother begs her. Mother lets the dishes clink together, echoing the family sound of scraping forks and knives. She butters the toast and blends the eggs, stirs their runny membrane. She dams the egg yolks with the poached tomatoes, dams their juices with the toast. Mother knows that certain things escape you. You must give them the attention they deserve. Mother puts things in their proper places, anything to make Pauline perk up and pay attention. It’s Mother’s job. “You may have forgotten that you were once a sick little girl,” she says while slicing, “but I haven’t.”
Mother’s forehead creases; her lips quiver expectantly. Pauline nibbles the crusty edges of her eggs. She eats the part that tastes like salt dust, knowing it dissolves. Anything to make her mother leave.
She eats at Ilams, mostly, when she visits Juliette. They steal a bottle of currant wine and a box of biscuits before tea. Juliette’s mother offers dishes of cream and cakes, all trimmed with little berries. They pop mountains of them into their mouths as juice dribbles down their chins. They laugh at each others’ ugly faces. It’s so easy when they’re together.
But tonight, Mother makes the worst possible threat. “You won’t be visiting Juliette,” she says, “until you’re eight stone and cheerful.”
Pauline stabs into her chicken breast, poking through its bars of bone. She sifts as though searching for parts she likes, knowing she won’t find them. I have to! I have to! she thinks. But I can’t. The only food I like is at Ilams. She looks across the table and her throat goes numb with fear. I’ll starve, and Mother knows it.
She sits up straight and breathes against her stomach pangs. She waits for them to finish. It’s quite a scene, and no amount of repetition makes it seem less strange. Her father speaks before swallowing; when he laughs, he spits a fleck of chicken into Pauline’s eye. Her grandmother grunts like a dog. Her mother’s nose twitches when she eats as though she were chewing through her nostrils. It seems so unnatural, but she does this every day.
People die every day, thinks Pauline. Death is no less natural than this.
What if Mother were to die? She sees it all so clearly. A bone gets stuck in Mother’s throat, needle-thin. She doesn’t notice it at first. She never pays attention. She tries to swallow. Mounds of mucus-brown build up against the bone, damming her saliva and the air she tries to breathe. Air to liquid to solid sludge. It all makes perfect sense to Pauline.
Mother clutches her throat, at first, but she doesn’t make a big to-do. In fact, her choking sounds much like her chewing, what with all that nonsense her nose does. She gives a few sniffling gasps then slumps into her plate. Her forehead lines blend with the meal: rows of marbled meat fat, strings of string beans molded into mashed potatoes. Shes carved a gravy garden with the talons of her fork. Her face bloats up. Her eyes bulge out. Mother’s knife lies readily across the edge of the plate, waiting to reveal her reflected stare.
